In a move that should surprise no one at all, leading members of Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF have been pushing Mugabe to form a new government immediately with a composition favorable to the party. Mugabe is likely to comply, which will sound the final death knell of the negotiations with Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC and will accomplish […]
The documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell is receiving wonderful reviews in the United States. The movie reveals the ways in which brave groups of Liberian women mobilized to demand peace in their beleaguered nation. Liberia seems tentatively to be on the right path in no small part because of what these women did […]
At World Defense Review J. Peter Pham speculates as to what an Obama administration might mean for Africa (and what Africa might mean to an Obama administration. Here is a sample: Senator Barack Obama's election as the forty-fourth President of the United States is, of course, a historic milestone in America. But it is also […]
Generally speaking, a delay in holding an African election is a portent of bad things to come. And this seeming truism might hold with regard to Cote d’Ivoir, where leaders have announced that the approaching elections, scheduled for November 30, will be delayed. The rationale behind the delay, however, seems reasonable and sound: Simply put, […]
For a party that claims “We are not shaken, we are unbreakable and we are indestructible,” the African National Congress sure is spending a lot of time disavowing being shaken, broken, or destroyed. And it is planning to spend an awful lot of time and resources fighting the right of the breakaway faction of the […]
All signs indicate that Robert Mugabe is winning in Zimbabwe. Give the old tyrant his due. Terror and violence and chaos are not the only tools in his arsenal. He also has shown himself to be a master of delay, both in playing out the elections over the course of this year and in terms […]
Exiled from her native South Africa for her political stances for more than three decades, the African singing voice of a generation, the embodiment of the Pan-African ideal, Miriam Makeba was many things in her rich, at times tragic life. Her passing, which came right after a performance in Italy on Sunday, has inspired memories […]
Prominent British blogger Norm Geras has looked at the Zimbabwe power-sharing negotiations, and especially SADC's recent attempts to intervene, and has come away unimpressed: The power-sharing deal in Zimbabwe, for everything that was wrong with it in requiring a compromise between those who had won the recent elections and the architects of the country's decline […]
The celebrations of Barack Obama's victory in the American Presidential elections were as intense and delirious and glorious in Kenya, the land of Obama's ancestry, as anyplace. Indeed, the results of Tuesday's elections set off a wave of euphoric celebration that were perhaps unparalelled in the country's post-independence history. G. Paschal Zacary argues in Foreign […]
It is nearly impossible to conceive of a more intractable conflict than that which perpetually wracks the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The myriad Khartoum-inspired nightmares in the Sudan come close, as does the stateless chaos in Somalia. But for a textbook case of genocidal early colonialism, general colonial misrule, Big Man Cold War clientelism, […]
The so-called Shikota Movement of ANC dissidents met this past weekend to continue the process of forming a new political party, the South African Democratic Congress, or Congress of the People. The end result was an announcement that the new party will launch officially on December 16, South Africa's Day or Reconciliation (and once the […]
It is quite clear that the misery of Zimbabweans has not provided much impetus to push the negotiations forward in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe has not much cared about the suffering of his citizenry over the course of the last decade and more. There is no reason to believe he would start now. And let there […]
Forgive the light posting of late. Between traveling a great deal lately and obsessing about the historic American presidential election there simply has been little time. Hopefully it is not too untoward to declare that I celebrate Barack Obama's epochal victory much as Nelson Mandela does.
Cote D’Ivoire is supposed to have a long-awaited presidential election this year. Elections are, of course, a crucial marker on the way to true liberal democracy in Africa and anywehere. But human rights observers have increasingly expressed concerns that rushing to have an election just for the sake of having an election might prove to […]
The Council on Foreign Relations has a report (available here with other resources and information) urging the United States to push for an expanded peacekeeping mandate in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Whether now is a time when the United States will be inclined to engage in the Congo or anyplace else in which […]